The present invention relates to a communication apparatus which communicates with another communication apparatus and a related communication method.
Communication systems have been proposed which employ both of a wired communication method such as powerline communication and a wireless communication method such as wireless LAN. Those communication systems have a communication method switching means for switching between a wired communication apparatus and a wireless communication apparatus. The communication method switching means switches to the wired communication apparatus when the communication state with the wireless communication apparatus is poor and to the wireless communication apparatus when the communication state with the wired communication apparatus is poor (refer to Patent document 1, for example).
[Patent document 1] JP-A-2002-319947
However, the above communication systems may encounter a situation that when switching is made to the other communication method upon variation in the transmission line status of one of the powerline communication method and the wireless communication method, the transmission line status of the other communication method is very poor and a desired data transmission cannot be made even after the communication method switching. As such, the method in which switching is made between the powerline communication method and the wireless communication method in accordance with their respective transmission line statuses and a data transmission is performed by using one of the two communication methods is associated with a problem that it is difficult to realize a stable, high-quality data transmission at all times.
Another approach is to always perform communications using both communication methods by employing a configuration which enables such operation. However, this is associated with a problem of a high power consumption.